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I lift up as he skims the sweatpants and my underwear down my thighs, my teeth grazing my lower lip as he bends to follow the path of the fabric. He’s taking his time, savoring me like a good wine, and I’m not mad about it. Every kiss, every touch is another gap in the clouds, raining down light onto what has been a very barren earth.
I hear the garments drop to the floor, and I wait for the self-consciousness or panic to kick in. But all I feel is the warm caress of his hands on my thighs, and the slow procession of his lips, making sure no part of me feels jealous of another.
My breath stalls in my chest as his lips brush my inner thigh, my back arching on the skin-warmed leather. I should stop him there, but I don’t want to.ThisSummer doesn’t want to—she’s desperate to let more light through the storm-clouds, until there’s nothing but blue sky and sunshine. She’s tired of the gloom and the cold and the loneliness, and I don’t blame her. I’m tired, too.
His tongue is summer honey, warm and sweet between my thighs. And with the delicious heat of it, I feel the buzz of every cell and nerve in the hive of my body, eager for more. He knows what he’s doing, teasing me the way he kisses me—changing the pace, keeping me surprised, keeping me waiting with bated breath for what he’ll do next.
But he’s listening, too, sensing the vibrations of my body, hearing the hive. When I grip the blanket that’s strewn over the couch and arch my neck, letting a moan slip from my lips, he changes nothing. He chases the sound of my bliss with the slow circle of his tongue, side-by-side in this pursuit with me, not battling against me. We’re in harmony, though we’re relative strangers, and with each crackle of electricity that ricochets through me, a different storm gathers—one that rolls in and rolls out, leaving the world brighter and glistening with fresh beginnings.
“Fuck, Rowan,” I murmur, half in a daze, but the delirium hasn’t even started yet.
A blinding beam of pure sunshine pierces my soul as his fingertips ease inside me, moving slowly, sensually. All the while, his tongue chases my ecstasy like a fuse charging toward a stack of dynamite, and I feel every spark as it races through the twisting, turning filaments of my veins. It’s a torment of the most incredible kind, and I feel like a wild-woman as I writhe and thrash against the couch, against him, running my hands through his hair, wishing I could pull him to me and experience everything he has to give.
It's not long before that crackling fuse finds the TNT in the very core of me, his tongue and fingers working in perfect unison, playing me like a beloved instrument. Every muscle, every cell, every nerve, every inch of me seizes as my orgasm hits, like lightning forking down from the heavens to strike me, splintering light and pleasure and raw power through my body until I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t do anything but grip the blanket underneath me and spill Rowan’s name from my lips.
“Rowan!” I gasp, squeezing my eyes shut as the intensity transports me to paradise. “Oh God, Rowan!”
He slows his pace but he doesn’t stop altogether, coaxing fresh sparks through my nerve endings, until the first current of euphoria starts to fade. My body relaxes limb by limb, muscle by muscle, until I sink down into the cracked leather, panting like I’ve just run a marathon, my head swimming.
And as I stare up at the ceiling for a moment, gathering my thoughts, a shadow falls across my mind. Tears bead, stinging my eyes. All of a sudden, I’m gasping, and it has nothing to do with the way Rowan made me feel; the way his touch sets me alight.
My body shuts down. My hands curl into fists, my arms pulling back toward my chest, and before I know it, I’m clambering off the couch, retreating to the middle of the room, withdrawing into myself as I gaze, wild-eyed, at Rowan. I’m panting hard, my lungs threatening to explode, my heart a heavy weight in my chest, my stomach slithering with unease where, just before, it thrummed with bliss. For a moment, I think I’m going to be sick, but I swallow it down.
“Are you okay?” Rowan jumps up, taking tentative steps toward me.
I put up my fists, unfurling them into open palms. “Don’t… Just, stay where you are. I need… I need a minute.”
“Okay, okay, no problem. You just… breathe. Take all the time you need. I’ll stay right here.” He puts up his own palms, but it’s a gesture of surrender. “Was it something I did? Was it too fast? I thought… I thought it was what you wanted, but if I moved too quick, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. If I—”
“Just give me a minute!” I shout, trembling.
His mouth closes sharply, his palms still up.
The truth is, I need more than a minute. I need a complete do-over. I need to hit reverse and go back to the moment in the evening where he left to get snacks and I got changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt to spend the rest of the night alone. No, I need to hit reverse and go back to that summer, two years ago. I need to tell Ben that we can come back for the motorcycle tomorrow, ignoring Cybil’s orders. She wouldn’t have scrapped it; we could’ve waited. My thoughts are folding in on themselves, collapsing under the weight of what I’ve just done—what I might’ve carried on doing with my best friend’s brother, with Grace’s uncle, of all fucking people! What the hell is wrong with me? My mom was the expert in self-sabotage and terrible choices, not me. Maybe, I’m more like her than I care to admit.
“I was just… trying to stop you from crashing through the railing thing outside,” I say coldly. The voice coming out of my mouth isn’t familiar—it’s mean, unfeeling, and unwarranted. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I…”
I needed to feel something, and you were there…I manage to stop myself from spewing that at him. He doesn’t deserve it. I flirted, I drank two bottles of wine with him, I invited him back to my place, I didn’t push him away when he kissed me—I set this in motion because I wanted to be wanted, and to pile all the blame onto him is something that I can’t permit. I can’t blame the wine, either, when I’m stone-cold sober. I’m not a coward, pleading diminished responsibility when the evidence is all there.
“I get it,” Rowan replies, in a kindlier tone thanIdeserve. “I misunderstood. I’ve spooked you again. I get it. Hell, if I’d been through what you’ve been through, if I’d lost my spouse the way you did, I wouldn’t—”
“Don’t!” There’s a harsh warning in my voice, so barbed it makes him flinch. “Don’t… make it worse.”
Don’t make excuses for me.I should say that, but I don’t. It’s easier if I let him think Idoblame him. That way, there’ll be no chance of a repetition. After he leaves this apartment, I shouldn’t see him again, and if I can’t avoid that, I need things to be cold between us. It’s the only way I can survive my own guilt, which swims in my skull now, drowning me in my own betrayal.
His mouth opens—the mouth I just enjoyed kissing so deeply; the mouth I enjoyed kissing me—like he means to say something else. But it closes again, and we’re left there, two relative strangers wondering what the hell to do next.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’ll go.”
I nod, still shivering though it’s practically tropical inside the apartment. “I think that’d be for the best.”
He retrieves his shirt from the floor and slowly puts it on, buttoning it back up, concealing everything I admired just a short while ago: a striptease in tragic reverse. And he looks so sad, so embarrassed, that all I want to do is go to him; close the gap that’s getting wider between us and pretend everything is okay, pretend that I can handle this.
I should tell him it’s not his fault. I should tell him it’s all on me. I should tell him I don’t want him to go. I should tell him that I just need another minute, and if he’d just kiss me again and lay down on the couch with me, wecanreverse time. I should take his hand and lead him into the bedroom, letting myself enjoysomething, for once. I can’t allow myself to even think it, but I’m tired of the guilt and, at the same time, I don’t know how to live without it: a messy knot I can’t untangle.
“Don’t worry,” he says, swiping one of the pink Snapple from the snack bags, “I won’t tell Lyndsey about this. But Iamgoing to take this for the road.”
The shivering ebbs. “It’s all yours.”
